Fantasist's Scroll

Oy! I finally get it!

This morning, while thinking like Martin Luther, it occurred to me why I have trouble with some of my fellow conlangers. It’s a simple difference of philosophy. They are opposed to my automated tools on the basis that they somehow degrade the “art” of conlanging. I think, to them, that the process of conlanging is the whole point.
To me, though, a constructed language isn’t relavent without a constructed culture to go with it. That is the fun of conlanging for me. Seeing the interplay of culture and language in a new way, or even an old way that I’m controlling, is the fun thing. The language creation itself is just a means to an end, so it only makes sense to me to crank it out as quickly as possible.

It’s interesting that this never occured to me before. Of course, I may have been so busy being defensive that I didn’t take the time to figure out what was going on. And, I have to admit, I let my temper get the best of me. I got irritated with the snobbery I percieved in the arguments I heard against using automation. I guess technology has become such a part of my life that I take for granted what it can do for me and that not everyone else exploits it the way I do. Go figure.
Anyway, I thought it was an interesting observation….

A whistling language?

Sure, why not! Not too long ago, someone on one of the many conlang e-mail lists I’m on started talking about a whistle-based language. I have to admit, I thought it was quite intriguing. I started to picture a bird-like race that might have developed such a language. In fact, I thought that someone had finally come up with a unique, new idea for a conlang. Nope.
At least, not according to this article on CNN.com. It seems there’s a whistle language that’s existed for quite some time in the Canary Islands. Unfortunately, it’s a language that’s started to die off already. But, on the bright side, the government is working at preserving it. In fact, they’ve gone so far as to require lessons in it in their schools in an attempt to preserve this highly unusual language. The article also mentions the “First International Congress of Whistled Languages” which also brought in experts in whistled languages found in Greece, Turkey, China and Mexico.
Just goes to show, I guess, that nothing we can imagine is so alien that it can’t exist! Let that be a lesson to you aspiring writers out there as you invent languages, and worlds, for your fiction!!

I see a disturbing trend…

I spent a little too much quality time on a conlang BBS this week. Well, it’s not a real BBS, but it’s one of those new-fangled, PHP-based web-BBS things. I hate them. I much, much prefer the old-fashioned e-mail list or newsgroup.
Anyway, I got all wrapped up in a discussion about the virtues, or lack thereof, in automated word generators. It started with someone reccomending my old generator, which is really based on code from Chris Pound. Well, someone complained that it would be nice to be able to specify the phonology of the words to be generated. So I worked for several months at PERL and finally coded up my Conlang Wordmaker, which will look really familiar to people who have used Langmaker. Well, when I posted that, it sparked a number of things, but one person made the comment that they “damn well would never use a word generator” to make their conlang. Well, that sort of irritated me. And, when I get irritated before my morning coffee, I tend to type rather sharp replies.

But, sharp replies aside, what’s wrong with using a word generator? I mean, a piece of beautiful furnature that was assembled with power tools isn’t any less beautiful, is it? Is something done by hand, in the slowest, hardest way possible, inherently more worthy of praise? I don’t think so, but apparently quite a few conlangers do seem to think so. And, as I’ve poked around the web, it seems to be a sentiment that conlang people in general have taken to be a Universal Truth. But, why?

I think it’s because so many of them are, or were, linguists or linguistics students. Academia is anchored to a rigid system of learning that tends to insist people follow certain patterns. I have a college degree, but most of what I know that I truly prize, I learned on my own far, far away from a classroom. I think far outside the box that academia tends to force scholarship into. For instance, in learning things like PERL, I learned that whichever way works, is a good enough way. Sure, there may be other ways, but if it works, it’s good enough way. So, too, in my “day job”. I manage servers in a corporate envrionment, so I often don’t have time to find the “best” way. I have to make it work, usually on a budget, quickly. I apply that maxim everywhere in my life.
So, how does that relate to conlanging? Well, I’m not really too hung up on phonology or morphology. I don’t care to spend hours upon hours making a rigid, highly technical scheme of phonology and morphology. It matters more to me how the language sounds. If I’m looking for something that sounds a little bit like Cantonese as spoken by a Polyneasean, what difference does it make how the words are formed? All that matters is that I get my end result, a conlang that sounds right.

I’m not in favor of form over function. I never have been. For most things, I’d rather it get done quick and dirty than never get done at all. So, I’m in favor of using whatever tools get the job done for a conlang. I don’t care if you steal words from a natural language and “mutate” them into a new conlang. Do whatever it takes to make a language that adds that realism to your fiction! What matters isn’t the process, but the art that you create!

I finished The Power of Babel by John McWhorter this past week.

And, it was pretty damn good! Okay, allowing for the fact that I’m interested in linguistics and history and historical linguistics, it’s still a good book. As my be guessed from that last sentence, The Power of Babel is about the history of language. Not a language, but all of them. Mr. McWhorter effectively uses examples from numerous languages from every continent and cultural region I can think of that has language.
In the very first chapter he outlines the five basic ways that language changes and then sets out to describe them in the subsequent chapters. I think he does and well enough that a rough, amatuer linguist like me can really understand what he’s saying. He even has a whole, thick, meaty chapter dedicated to pidgins and creoles, which is a subject that fascinates me. He talks about the social and economic pressures that drive language change, which I thought was quite insightful.

Now, I have to admit, I got this book with the sole purpose of getting ideas for conlanging. I was not dissapointed! The linguistic ideas came hot and heavy. Everything got touched on in this book: grammar, phonology, morphology and how they all alter over time. I have to say that I liked this even better than the Language Instinct, which was a very good book.
If you have even a passing interest in historical linguistics, buy this book and read it!

This is a variation on last week’s script, but it’s still petty cool.

Last week, I released a script that lets you specify your own phonology This week, I’ve added a variation on that generator. This one not only lets you choose your own phonology, but it lets you automatically translate a short list of words into your new conlang! I’ve listed enough words for a short naming language, but you can change those for ones that you’d prefer. Whew! That’s four conlang scripts in four weeks!! That’s enough for a bit, I think. And, it should be enough to get you folks started on your own language, so, go have fun!

This is a totally new script.

Last week, I released a variation on the first conlang generator on my site. This week, I’m turning loose a script that lets you specify your own phonology. That’s both the word construction “patterns” and the actual phonological units that go into them. So now, you can make words that are based on your own ideas of phonological construction and not rely on existing languages. There’ll be more next week, but in the mean time, go have fun!

This is the second new script.

Last week, I re-released my Conlang Word Generator in a limited version. This week, I’ve added a variation on that generator. This version lets you use your own source lexicon! So, if you wanted to make more words that were similar to your own, hand-crafted conlang, all you have to do is copy and paste words from that conlang into the input section and click the button. Presto! More words in the same style as your conlang. Or, at least, similar to your conlang. So, now, you don’t need to rely on my choice of datasets. Go have fun!

At least, in a limited capacity.

After much thought, and reworking of code, I’ve decided to bring back the popular ConLang Word Generator. It functions basically the same, but will only generate a maximum of 25 words at a time. Hopefully, that will not be too big a burden on the server.
However, rest assured that if I get even the slightest hint of trouble, I’ll have to take it down. It was pretty touch and go last time I had a popular script running that killed my web host’s server, so I’m not taking any chances this time.

And, stay tuned for a new, totally different, word generator! Coming soon to a web page near you!!